Heh, wow, it looks like they just threw a bunch of parts together for that ship. :-)

I know the simplest explanation is that they come from the same model shop, and that they sourced the "greeblies" from the same types of model parts, but I'm pretty sure (but can't put my finger on it) that there's some of the same parts on there that they used on Star Trek ships. One of those parts looks a little like a warp nacelle, and looks like it's Bird of Prey green.

And, I mean, it's weird that after ILM did ROTJ, the FX of Star Trek movies changed and that Trek seems to have gotten a Wars thumbprint on it. I bet some people think they ripped it off a little, but really same FX guys, and yet the styles are also so completely different.

Sorry, one of the only raving fans of both franchises, signing off for now. :-}

One thing RotS does well is the space battle (well... low-orbit battle) in the beginning. You get a real sense of chaos. Ships are at all kinds of orientations, moving along various different planes, and you'd think with all of them in orbit above a planet there'd be a clear sense of "up."

Lucas thinks of star wars as a story about the rise, fall and redemption of Aniken Skywalker, and everything else is a backdrop. (STAY ON TARGET)

OK that probably ruffled some feathers, but whatever.

I'll spot Lucas the WHOLE first movie. I'll just give it to him. You have to start somewhere and... I don't know. I'm being a good sport here. Lucas, you can just mulligan that shit.

Let's just look at what happens between that movie and a new hope. They get 4 hours (hell they could probably get away with 5) to tell the story of the following (just cannon, none of that expanded bullshit):

1) All of the Jedi have to die except for Yoda and Obi Wan

2) All of the retainer fleet will have to be destroyed leaving the rebels
with only a small fleet

3) A shitload of star destroyers and super star destroyers get built for purposes of ass kicking

4) The Empire takes over most of the inner galaxy

5) Anakin has to father two children

6) Anakin has to be seduced to the dark side

7) The distraction army has to be destroyed

8) An entire war gets fought with clones, and they all have to be killed or die of old age or whatever

Now here is what I want you to do. Take that list and rank it twice.

on one list I want you to rank how awesome those things would be to watch across two films.

In the other I want you to rank the things on the list in order of how much time Lucas spent on screen working toward that thing happening.

Now compare those two lists. THAT is why ROTS was a bowl of dung.

The worst thing is it could have followed my favorite format for trilogies. 4.5 hours of explaining who everyone is and why they matter and what's going on. Then just 1.5 hours of them all eating shit.

Like that's seriously my favorite. It's like when kids play with blocks and they get them all built up as high as they can get them with their shaky little hands and then when they have gotten to the point they can't go any higher they just kick the whole thing over and watch it come tumbling down.

I was judging my opinion on the movie that was presented to me, not on the movie that could have been. Of course they could have made it better, a lot better in fact. But what movie doesn't make you think that?

When they're all oriented the same way it's easier to maneuver without worrying about running into your own ship. Things could get disorganized and messy very quickly if they were all different directions.

Every solar system would (normally) have all the planets rotating in the same direction around the star. Using the right-hand rule no matter what system you entered you would be able to orient yourself the same as everyone else.

True; the physiologically alien races probably have their own weird convention that looks odd to us humans. Watching 2 fleets at drastically different orientations would make for an interesting battle.

This is actually the case in the GFFA as well. Shields can go down in sections, at which point a savvy captain will roll/turn their ship so that a fresh set of shields is facing the opponent. The only reason we don't see more of it in the movies is that most of what we see are giant fleet actions at point-blank range, where all of that is not as much of an option.

In the Thrawn trilogy, they make a point to mention that the Grand Admiral himself directs the ships to rotate so many degrees this way or that, etc. Granted, that was just how he did things, and the tight control and timing were all part of his hit-and-run tactics. But I did really enjoy the fact that they mentioned that an Imperial fleet would come out of hyperspace and everything would be at a screwed-up angle at first, until he ordered the ships to rotate.

There's no "up" or "down," but there is such a thing as being parallel to the solar or galactic disc, depending on where you are. You'd still end up with the problem depicted in the comic where you can still be "aligned correctly" and end up upside down relative to everyone else.

I'd think it would be more like there's two up/down directions, then there's every other direction. You'd be able to see if you were in line with the ovaloid or the disc, but you wouldn't really have anything to reference to know if you're "upsidedown" or not.

Sure you would. If you know your location in the galaxy, and can identify at least one other star in the sky, you can use that to orient yourself. If you can identify two, it's even easier. And you can't identify any other stars, how are you going to travel through hyperspace anyway?

They definitely have one direction designated as "up" (galactic north) by consensus. Once you know which direction is conventionally considered up, it's trivially easy to figure out which way you're facing relative to that, and correct.

One possible method is to use the solar ecliptic. Orient up and down by the rotational direction of the planets, with, say, counterclockwise rotation when looking "down" at the system. For systems without planets, well, same thing but with the Galactic Disk instead?

If you consider the north poles to be right side up then it is simple. If the planets have substantially different facing poles then either pick the largest or the one that is inhabited. Or the planet you are wanting to put your ships around.

Or the "north pole" of the system. If the planets are orbiting the sun, then whichever direction you'd go to see the planets moving counterclockwise around the sun is north.
Bonus: Because of the way solar systems form, the north poles of the planets are going to pointing toward system north (barring events that have knocked them off axis, like what happened to Uranus)

See, that's what I always thought, but then I learned that not every system within that galaxy is on a parallel plane with the galaxy itself. According to this, our system, for example, is actually moving closer to perpendicular to the rest of the Milky Way. We just have a tendency to think of it as "flat," for some reason. But then, we once thought the Earth itself was flat, too.

But if they travel in orientation to the galaxy then they will always arrive in synchronized orientation. The only time they would be out of orientation is when they leave the galaxy, which as far as I know they never do in Star Wars.

That actually wouldn't matter. Once you have a consensus on which direction is galactic north, all you really need to know is your position in the galaxy and the position of one other star and the galactic disk itself (or a second star) relative to you. Just looking at the NJO galactic map, I can figure out stuff like "from Corellia, when Klatooine is off the port bow and Y'Toub is dead ahead, galactic north is up."

As the flight commander of the Executor, I would have the ship slowly rotate just to troll the rest of the fleet. And who would point that out to Darth Vader, on risk of dat strangle and telling him his flagship is "wrong"?

That, and the fact that most ships, if navigating on a star chart, may already have a general sense of what is "up" and "down" for each system already pre-programmed into them. It doesn't seem too hard to address this novel point. I love the level of thought it produces, though.

Some of my favorite scenes in Star Wars is when a star ship approaches a planet, and you see the planet flip around so the ship is "on top" of it. Or the ship flips around, and then it cuts to the planet flipped around, if this makes sense.

I would assume that you would want ALL ships on the same plane that that if you were to say order a turn to left at 90 degrees everyone could do it easily instead of trying to figure out which direction they were pointing, what plane they were on, and what the hell way was left compared to the command ship.

I've never thought of this but that was the first thing that came to me and it made sense.

In all honesty, space navies probably will enforce that rule for the same reason that they enforce proper formation in real armies today. It's a discipline matter and often provides a psychological benefit against the enemy. A coordinated force - thousands of people in the same uniform, under the same flag, & moving in perfect sync - is more threatening than a bunch of people showing up in whatever, from random directions, and just milling about until a horn blows to charge.

There was a book series I read a while ago that had very realistic space battles in it. It was called the Lost Fleet series. Really good realistic tech all around so worth a read if you want to see what it would look like.

Yes it is. Really realistic space battles, like if they look at a ship exploding they make a point of saying that happen an hour ago not right now. Over all a good series with a lot of tech that is not impossible.

My personal favourite idea for handwaving something like this would be that artificial gravity systems influence each other, and if two ships were close together at different orientations you'd get weird gravitational anomalies. Not that I'm suggesting this is how it is in star wars, but it's what I'd use myself.

This would also allow for short periods at different orientations to give tactical advantage in battle.

Gravity still has an effect in outer space. Weightlessness is actually an illusion caused by falling towards the planet while inside a structure that is also falling. You perceive your weightlessness relative to your surroundings. This is how the vomit comet works for training astronauts. In space, the gravity-free experience is extended indefinitely because as you fall towards the planet, your forward velocity causes the planet to curve away from you. Now, if a spaceship entered a standard orbit where the inward acceleration of gravity is balanced by the tangential velocity of the craft, the orientation shouldn't matter. If, however, a ship wanted to maintain a geostationary orbit as would be desirable in this situation in SW:ESB, there is only 1 orbital radius at which un-powered orbit can be achieved. If the ship want to remain stationary at a closer or father distance from the planet the force of the planet's gravity on the ship and its occupants would not be properly countered by its tangential velocity. If the ship was upside-down (or sideways) relative to the planet, the occupants would experience an upward (or sideways) pull in addition to the artificial gravity of the ship pulling downward. So, if spaceships remain in an orientation perpendicular to gravitational acceleration, the ship can avoid any unexpected gravitational effect.

I feel that it is based on coordination. If you where on the upside-down Destroyer, and you where fighting another ship, say a Mon Cal designed one, then you'd get a feel of being in the wrong direction. Most ships in Star Wars are designed with a sort of gravitation draw. The Mon Cals have the spires that reach down, the Star Destroyers with their bridges going up. It's about perpective and natural human rationality. A Pro-Human Imperium would see that things are done the -correct- way, i.e. righthand facings, gravity down, etc.

I've spent many hours obsessing over this as I see the orientation as one of the biggest snafus of the trilogy. The rebels apparently follow the same rules, even when combating the Empire. Maybe it's like the maritime laws? However, who is enforcing them? The Empire? Yeah, so let's not follow that?